Kirby's Adventure NES Review
If you’re a masochist looking for a reason to bash your head against a wall for five hours straight, then Kirby’s Adventure for the Nintendo Entertainment System is the game for you. This eldritch abomination of a video game is the sole reason my NES is currently shoved in a dumpster.
Firstly, the story is just pitiful. There are only three characters (and one twist villain) that have any importance, everyone else is just irrelevant. The game’s “twist” villain is not foreshadowed at all and is just a pitiful excuse to attempt to redeem the game’s main antagonist, King Dedede, who I’ll remind you in the previous title literally stole all of Dreamland’s food. I wasn’t expecting a Red Dead Redemption 2-level story, but something of substance would’ve been appreciated. Where are the ancient civilizations, alternate dimensions, tales of loss and grief, and eldritch gods? I’d assume at the very least Kirby would have an interesting backstory, but no, he just “blew in on a Spring breeze.”
All of this isn’t even mentioning the abhorrent gameplay. The controls are slippery and unintuitive. Why are floating and jumping separate buttons? Why can’t you just press jump and start floating midjump with the same button? It would make platforming so much smoother. And don't get me started on the inconsistent mess that's inhaling. Kirby can normally only inhale enemies his size — fine — but then why can he inhale minibosses twice his size after they’ve been defeated? Also, some enemies his size can’t be inhaled for whatever reason. Shotzos, Scarfys, Gordos, and Meta Knight are all Kirby’s size yet for some reason he can’t inhale them. Where’s the consistency?
All that's not even mentioning the copy abilities, a promising idea that is poorly executed. They are woefully unbalanced; sword and hammer are objectively the best abilities. They both allow for full movement range, can execute midair attacks, can do fast and consistent damage to all enemies, and even work underwater. The rest either make you freeze in place when you use them (spark and fire), force you to move potentially into pits (wheel and fireball), don't work on bosses (throw and backdrop), or are just plain bad (sleep).
In addition, the game itself is unfairly balanced. It looks innocent on the box, but right from the get-go, the game immediately taunts your lack of artistic skill with its opening (I spent five fucking hours trying to follow that damn tutorial). And once gameplay starts, it only gets worse. Bosses are either a cakewalk with a good copy ability or a super boring waiting game of “wait for them to do an inhalable attack and hope you aren’t on the wrong side of the screen or it’ll disappear.” Levels are plagued by unintuitive enemy placement and control issues, leading to multiple unfair deaths. The side minigames are also straight-up unfair. Beating King Dedede in Quick Draw is nigh impossible unless you can see the future and Crane Fever is rigged (if the big Kirby plush spawns the back you’re just screwed).
The game also runs like garbage. Parts of the sprites disappear constantly, and god forbid you or an enemy use spark or freeze; the game’s framerate will plummet lower than the Wii U’s sales. I found myself getting game-overs constantly due to framerate issues combined with slippery controls. And of course, when you get a game over you have to restart the entire world all over again.
Art-style-wise, a pixel art game from a big publisher like Nintendo is just sad. Also, why is Kirby pink? I’ve always headcanonned him as yellow—it just felt right. He’s also a bit too cutesy for my liking; maybe it’s because I’m American, but I think he’d be more marketable if he was more aggressive-looking.
The games director, Masakado Sakurai, is clearly incapable of creating a good game. Anyway, for my final conclusion: Kirby’s Adventure for the Nintendo Entertainment System is a short, charming, and fun time well worth playing. This game gets a 9/10 from me.